Badly Drawn Boy is Enjoyably Heard
By Kate Brokaw
A&F Writer

Barely five months after his soundtrack to About a Boy hit stores, Damon Gough, a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy, releases his latest beauty of a recording this week, the fantastically titled Have You Fed the Fish? A lush, grandly theatrical album, Have You Fed the Fish? shows the British crooner going in more daring directions than his already impressive oeuvre up until now..

Having previously released only a few EPs, the eternally hat-wearing Gough seemed to come out of nowhere in 2000, with his Mercury Music Prize-winning debut album, The Hour of Bewilderbeast. Compared to sensitive acoustic counterparts Elliott Smith and Nick Drake, Badly Drawn Boy nevertheless garnered overwhelming critical plaudits for his beautifully orchestrated and unfailingly delicate music.

Bewilderbeast went all over the place with subtle experimentation, full of instrumental segues and sound changes from track to track, all centered by the tender simplicity of lyrics like, “this song will lead you when you’re old/This song will heat you when you’re cold.” It’s one of those miraculous recordings that is nearly impossible to listen to as anything but an entire album: remove one track from its path (which traces the highs and lows of a relationship), and you’re taking something away from its thematic journey.

This May, Gough followed up Bewilderbeast by scoring the soundtrack of the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel About a Boy. Mixing quiet melancholy with jangling, insistently poppy melodies, it’s not a particularly meaty album: as would become a film score, a good portion of the album is made up of instrumentals. (The vocal tracks – especially the bright, lyrical “Something To Talk About”– are particular standouts.) But it’s a wistfully pretty collection, bringing delicate instrumentation and lovely melodies into a score that could have been enormously conventional.

Have You Fed the Fish?, which completes a trilogy of albums within two years, follows through on everything promised by the first two records, while still taking each piece further. All the delight and all the contrasting melancholy becomes far more grandiose here, as Gough combines a more assured, dramatic sound with a conscious awareness of his new public persona.

The opening of the album contains a sound bite that immediately makes fun of his newfound fame, as a voice over an intercom informs passengers that, “If you take a look out the right side of the plane, you’ll see a cloud that looks exactly like Badly Drawn Boy.” Amidst the “oohs” and “aahs” that follow that statement, one comment is clear: “That guy’s everywhere!” And indeed, one lyric that repeats within two songs on the album is the proud declaration that “I’m turning Madonna down/Calling it my best move.”

But don’t call it cockiness, call it love; Gough seems to have much more important things on his mind than Madonna. On “You Were Right,” he remembers how he “stayed up to watch the news” on the nights that Sinatra, Jeff Buckley, Kurt Cobain and John Lennon died, clearly acknowledging some of his influences, and those whom he’s loved in the past. But on Have You Fed the Fish?, he’s found a new love, and, as he sings in the title track, “the keys to your heart open the door to the world.” Appropriately, the vocals sound much more passionate and confident: as much as he admits (in “40 Days, 40 Fights”) that “it’s hard when you don’t know how,” he’s also sure that “I’ll be here to throw you some clues.”

“How can I give you the answers you need/When all I posses is a melody?” Gough wonders in the centerpiece of the album, “How,” a grandly melancholic track that goes back and forth between quiet, sad little instrumentals and sublime, soaring choruses, underscored by a driving beat. “Born Again” features an undeniably catchy electric guitar riff, and upbeat horns and beautifully arranged string sections underscore the record.

One of the significant new changes in Have You Fed the Fish? is that nearly every track stands on its own as a single-worthy song. This is not to say that the album is more commercial sounding – indeed, it’s just as experimental, if not more, than Bewilderbeast. But this experimentation comes up within tracks rather than from one to the other. There are less short segues between songs but more variation contained in each track, as quiet acoustic verses build to gorgeous choruses, and instruments that begin in the background gradually come out front and center. The overture-like musical opening of the first track comes up again in a theatrical, almost circus-like segment later in the album.

Sometimes the risks don’t pay off: “The Further I Slide,” as a friend pointed out, sounds remarkably like an update to “Sexual Healing” with its attempt at “funky” drumming (one can’t help but imagine the High Fidelity record store clerks making fun of the track). That same song also makes poor use of female backup vocals, as does “Using Our Feet,” a couple of tracks later.

But when those jumpy melodies come back in, all is right with the world again. “Somehow we’ll be all right,” Gough promises in “What Is It Now.” Have You Fed the Fish? is the closest thing to a rock album that Badly Drawn Boy has released, a gloriously exciting recording of a love story that overwhelms and enchants, but refuses to lose its quirkiness.